how perverse! up 'til now i never felt any great inclination to nab a copy of Ellen Datlow's
Poe but reading Lord P.'s not entirely favourable synopsis of/ comments on the Suzy McKee Charnas story it struck me that this is just the sort of thing i might go for. So i dug out Stephen Jones's
Best New Horror 21 for the Nicholas Royle story from the same collection and .... its likely i'm cured, but the Jones antho contains its share of gems...
Two splendid proper EC-ish horrors by the same author bookend
BNH#21, the one giving off serious Ed Gein vibes, the other (for some bizarre reason), putting me in mind of Ferlin Husky's hilariously mawkish C & W classic,
The Drunken Driver!
Michael Kelly - The Woods: Officer Ned Creed pays a visit to gnarled old timer Jack - he has a face rough as tree bark - at his remote cabin in the woods, ostensibly to check that his friend has enough provisions to see him through the harsh winter. Ned tells him that that fool Tom Brightman has been sounding off about the Wendigo again. In the past, it's been his sled dogs have gone missing - eaten, according to Brightman - but this time it's his youngest boy. After the officer departs, Jack goes back to preparing his dinner.
It would be unfair to say too much about Kelly's
Princess Of The Night other than it runs for two deadly pages and features a man with a guilty past and a little girl out trick or treating on the wrong night of the year.
Micheal Marshall Smith - What Happens When You Wake Up In The Night: Winner of the 2010 BFS award for short fiction, this story also makes it into Ellen Datlow's
Best Horror of the Year 2. Little Maddy is scared of the dark so she has a deal with mummy that she can keep her bedroom light on at night. But Mummy's either reneged on the deal or the light-bulb has blown because when Maddy wakes up the room is black as pitch, the door and windows have disappeared and she can't find the switch. Neither can mummy and daddy.
Must admit, while reading it i was a tiny bit underwhelmed, but whereas the likes of his, say
More Tomorrow and
To Receive Is Better jolt you like a jellyfish sting,
What Happens ... is a haunter. The father's - almost throwaway - possible explanation for what has happened in the final paragraph made me wonder if MMS was as freaked by a recent public awareness advertisement on the necessity of regularly checking your smoke alarm as i was ...
Joe Hill & Stephen King - Throttle: Ten-strong aging biker gang The Tribe - every one an army vet - race across the desert after a business meeting with spaced out entrepreneur Dean Clarke ended in double homicide. The Tribe had invested in his crystal meth lab, only for it to burn down on the first day of production, and now they want their $60,000 back. Trouble is, Dean's girlfriend has been sampling the wares, and, convinced she's about to be gang-raped, pulls a gun. Roy Klowes, the Tribe's resident psychopath, hacks her to pieces with a machete while arrogant youngster Race Adamson splits Clarke's head in two with a shovel. Leader Vince Adamson (Race's dad) and the elder gang members, notable his loyal lieutenant Lemmy Chapman, are appalled at this development, and it's clear that Vince will have some sorting out to do once they get home to Vegas. To make matters worse, when they stop off at a diner, Race shoots his idiot mouth off about the murders in the earshot of a truck-driver. When he insists they set off for Show Low on some fool errand to obtain the sixty grand from Clarke's hooker sister, the 18-Wheeler follows ....
Even without the introductory notes, you know exactly which Richard Matheson story/ early Spielberg movie provided the inspiration, but whereas arguably
Duel's greatest strength lies in fact that Mann has done nothing to provoke the trucker,
Throttle's suicidally reckless Laughlin has good reason to drive down every last member of the Tribe. How many will he splatter beneath his wheels?
Nicholas Royle - The Reunion: Twenty five years after his wife Maggie left Medical School, Will accompanies her to a class reunion in the Midlands at some sprawling complex that looks like it may once have served as an RAF base, or lunatic asylum, or both. Shades of both Poe's
The Masque of the Red Death and doppelganger novella
William Wilson but i'm afraid it didn't do anything much for me - not that NR should lose any sleep over that!